It depends on a lot of things, but most importantly, what I'm going for in the shot. In low light, I typically want to shoot at the widest aperture, so Av wins. If I'm shooting a waterfall, I'll probably want to play with the shutter speed, so Tv gets the nod. If I don't care what the picture looks like as long as it's exposed properly, I use P, or [] if I want to throw caution to the wind (though, honestly, I rarely use [], since P works most of the time, and let's face it, I didn't invest in an SLR system to take pictures that way).

Almost always manual (M). I shoot flash-less indoor candids quite a bit, so I generally need to control both the aperture and the exposure time else the camera may pick something infeasibly slow. If I'm having trouble picking the exposure time then I may switch to Aperture Priority (Av) just to see what the camera's light meter thinks about the situation, but if it's too slow then I either need to accept a dark photo and post-process for brightness and contrast, or bump the ISO and post process for noise.

For full-auto ([ ]), I have the same problem as JAE: JPEG output only. That was fine for the first 3k shutter activations when I was learning how to use a dSLR, but now I almost always want RAW for post-processing purposes.

ludi wrote:Almost always manual (M). I shoot flash-less indoor candids quite a bit, so I generally need to control both the aperture and the exposure time else the camera may pick something infeasibly slow.

Isn't M a little slow for candids? I'll use M if I'm shooting with a flash, since the flash will dial in the correct illumination for me in TTL mode. But if I need to capture the moment and don't have time to adjust exposure indoors, I find that S is my best bet, combined with autoISO (the camera will usually go for the largest aperture in these situations anyway). Then again, I shoot with primes, so I always know what reciprocal I need to use for shutter speed. It might be slightly more tricky with a zoom (not to mention that most consumer zooms are too slow for indoor shooting). Unfortunately, my camera disables autoISO in M mode, which means I can't use this approach when using an adapted legacy lens.

I use aperature-priority when shooting landscape, P for day-to-day shots, and M when I've got my father-in-law's old all-manual lenses on the D40. Even though P is typically pretty close, I find myself making adjustments often +/- 2/3. Probably should shoot manual more often

Voldenuit wrote:Isn't M a little slow for candids? I'll use M if I'm shooting with a flash, since the flash will dial in the correct illumination for me in TTL mode. But if I need to capture the moment and don't have time to adjust exposure indoors, I find that S is my best bet, combined with autoISO (the camera will usually go for the largest aperture in these situations anyway). Then again, I shoot with primes, so I always know what reciprocal I need to use for shutter speed. It might be slightly more tricky with a zoom (not to mention that most consumer zooms are too slow for indoor shooting). Unfortunately, my camera disables autoISO in M mode, which means I can't use this approach when using an adapted legacy lens.

Haven't experimented much with the Shutter Priority setting yet although I probably should. My wide-aperture lenses are all primes, so I can lock in the reciprocal easily enough, but I don't always want the lens to go to fully open if it's going to cost me some sharpness or make the depth-of-field too shallow. If the subject isn't moving much, I would rather dial the shutter down below the reciprocal and then use a railing or some other stationary object as an impromptu monopod.

Aperture priority (Av) when ambient lighting is good or when using a flash for fill. This is like 95% of my shooting.

Shutter priority (Tv) set to the highest x-sync when ambient lighting is bad and I'm dependent on the flash for primary lighting, but I only do this for taking pictures of people. If I can get away with using aperture priority, I would, but gotta watch the shutter speed. I'll bump the ISO up just to shoot in Av if I can, but won't go too high as it becomes a trade off between noise and overall exposure. FYI: Av mode with a flash on Canons will attempt to expose for the background, which could mean slower shutter speeds -- from the folks I've helped, a lot of them don't seem to realize that one.

Bulb mode if I'm shooting something that needs more than 30" of exposure (e.g. star trails).

I've never shot in manual mode for the types of pictures I do. It's slow to work with and seems a bit pointless with Av and Tv modes already there for use. I'll dial in EC when in those modes if needed. If for some reason I need more than +-2EV EC then I guess I'd have no choice but to switch to manual, but I haven't come across that yet in all my years of photography. I guess it's good to work in it when you're first learning about photography, but once you understand how ISO, aperture, and shutter all determine exposure, it's pointless to me to keep shooting in manual.

The only time my camera gets set to program mode is if I'm handing the camera off to someone who doesn't know how to use it, which is basically everyone I've ever handed the camera off to. haha

ludi wrote:Haven't experimented much with the Shutter Priority setting yet although I probably should. My wide-aperture lenses are all primes, so I can lock in the reciprocal easily enough, but I don't always want the lens to go to fully open if it's going to cost me some sharpness or make the depth-of-field too shallow. If the subject isn't moving much, I would rather dial the shutter down below the reciprocal and then use a railing or some other stationary object as an impromptu monopod.

Ah, I guess one of the "advantages" of shooting Micro Four Thirds is I never have to worry about having too little depth of field .

Voldenuit wrote:Isn't M a little slow for candids? I'll use M if I'm shooting with a flash, since the flash will dial in the correct illumination for me in TTL mode. But if I need to capture the moment and don't have time to adjust exposure indoors, I find that S is my best bet, combined with autoISO (the camera will usually go for the largest aperture in these situations anyway). Then again, I shoot with primes, so I always know what reciprocal I need to use for shutter speed. It might be slightly more tricky with a zoom (not to mention that most consumer zooms are too slow for indoor shooting). Unfortunately, my camera disables autoISO in M mode, which means I can't use this approach when using an adapted legacy lens.

On the contrary, manual can be quite fast. If the lighting is constant then you can basically set it and forget it.

Aperture priority for most of my shooting. Full manual with the flash, usually. Actually full manual happens decently often.

On the P&S, usually also in aperture priority, although fairly often in regular automatic P(rogram), as I find Program often defaults to fully open at f2.0, and often I prefer it stopped down to f2.8 or f4ish as the lens is noticeably sharper stopped down a bit, so I often leave Aperture priority set to f2.8 or f4 or f4.5 or whatever and then flip back to Program if I want to shoot at f2.

My P&S's "manual" mode is really program auto, so that's what I shoot in.

My film SLR, I usually shoot in program auto or shutter priority, although I have done some in aperture priority. Felt no need whatsoever to go full manual, and being film, a bad shot is wasted money (both on film and on processing,) and generally when I take a shot in one of the more automated modes, I get what I want.

danny e. wrote:I use M exclusively .. usually because i want control of aperture and shutter speed constantly.

just recently started trying out Av mode just to see if it'd do ok. not too bad so far. I decided to give it a try because there have been several times in M mode where I swing the camera around taking pics and forget to check the lighting so get several shots over exposed / under exposed before I notice I didnt change my shutter speed.